In the past two years, instant retail has been a hot trend, and lightning warehouses have been at the forefront. But most discussions tend to stop at conclusions like "fast growth," "intense platform competition," and "huge opportunities." The truly core questions are obscured: what does a seemingly hot business rely on to sustain itself in the long run? Before the Chinese New Year, I made a special trip to Xuzhou to visit Sun Qin, co-founder of Jiangxiaotun. Our nearly two-hour in-depth conversation ranged from the heat of the track to more fundamental aspects: organization, franchise recruitment, supply chain, platform dynamics, and why a lightning warehouse company, after rapid growth, would deliberately slow down to build internal strength. After the conversation, I found Jiangxiaotun to be a highly valuable case study. What's interesting about this company is that it didn't start with a standard answer. The founder started with a porridge shop and only entered lightning warehouses in 2022. Through execution and acumen, they managed to open over 200 stores in just two years. This path of "front-end density first, back-end capabilities later" is quite representative in the industry. But at the peak of scale growth, they made a counterintuitive decision: to deliberately slow down. In my conversation with Sun Qin, I realized that almost all the changes at Jiangxiaotun over the past year are related to her. Sun Qin, co-founder of Jiangxiaotun, has spent over a decade in the retail industry. A Fudan University graduate, she held key positions at Carrefour and Sam's Club, both retail giants in their respective eras. In 2024, she came into contact with Jiangxiaotun through Yaowang Technology, and officially joined in early 2025. When talking about her past, she simply said, "I've been in the industry for some years; I'm a retail veteran." But when the conversation turned to founder Fang Xiangjun, she had more to say. Fang Xiangjun is an entrepreneur who started from a porridge shop, relying on sharp business acumen and strong execution. "I can't learn how Mr. Fang gets stores up and running. He's responsible for charging ahead, and I'm responsible for holding and streamlining the positions we've taken. We work well together." This reflects mutual recognition and trust. Sun Qin admitted that in the first half of 2025, Jiangxiaotun deliberately slowed down its franchise recruitment pace, shifting focus to organizational restructuring and rebuilding internal capabilities. The reason is straightforward: as the industry moves from a dividend period to a screening period, the previous extensive approach is no longer sufficient to support long-term development. In other words, store count can be ramped up, but corporate capabilities cannot be rushed; growth becomes a burden if capabilities lag. Jiangxiaotun: Slowing Down at the Peak of Growth Jiangxiaotun's starting point lacked traditional retail genes. Founder Fang Xiangjun went from porridge shops to lightning warehouses without an existing supply chain system, a mature franchise recruitment organization, or a replicable back-end capability. Many things were forced into existence by reality during store expansion. This path precisely constitutes its distinctive growth characteristic: front-end density first, back-end capabilities later. First, open stores and build scale; then, retroactively fill in products, organization, and coordination. This is also the real growth trajectory for many lightning warehouse companies. In the early stage, the industry competed on execution. Whoever could quickly achieve local market density would gain orders, cash flow, and platform bargaining power. Jiangxiaotun precisely seized this wave of dividends, opening over 200 stores in less than two years. But Sun Qin keenly noticed, "When scale crosses the 200-store threshold, the old management methods based on experience and relationships collectively fail. Single stores rely on supervision; chain stores rely on systems." At this point, the core problem facing Jiangxiaotun changed. "In the new stage, Jiangxiaotun's focus is no longer on opening more stores, but on managing existing stores smoothly, stably, and efficiently. Front-end growth continues, but if back-end capabilities don't keep up, growth quickly becomes pressure." From this perspective, Jiangxiaotun's "slowing down" is not conservative but a gear shift. So, Sun Qin's first task after officially joining was not to push scale but to lay the foundation—standardizing people, legal, and finance. From organizational structure, legal compliance, to financial and tax systems, they first straightened out the company's fundamentals. Without this foundation, all future expansion would be fraught with hidden dangers. More energy was devoted to heavier aspects like organizational division, product teams, brand liaison, and supply coordination. On the surface, it's about adjusting pace; in essence, it's about building basic skills. This change is crucial. Because lightning warehouses are ostensibly driven by online orders, but the underlying logic remains competition in offline supply capabilities. Whether goods are stable, assortment is complete, and promotional execution is consistent ultimately points to operational capability. Store scale is just a result, not core competitiveness. What truly determines the ceiling is whether the growth brought by speed can be consolidated into a controllable, replicable operating system. The Real Challenge Isn't Opening Stores, But Making Supply "Controllable" After store scale increases, the problem becomes something harder: can supply be truly managed? This is also a watershed many lightning warehouse players encounter. In the previous stage, everyone competed on speed. Whoever opened stores first got order volume, cash flow, and market position. But as scale grows, the focus of the business shifts rapidly: the front end is still opening stores and grabbing orders, but what truly determines efficiency in the back end has become supply control. As total store count rises, store structures naturally stratify. Some stores can achieve unified supply, unified actions, and unified execution; others, though within the system, differ greatly in procurement habits, inventory structure, and daily operations, making it hard to maintain consistent execution intensity. At this point, the problem is no longer just whether goods are available, but whether the same batch of goods can run at the same pace. When lightning warehouses reach a certain scale, most hit this hurdle. In the early loose franchise period, stores often sourced goods themselves to pursue extreme low prices. "Originally, stores purchased from Pinduoduo, 1688... and the barcodes might even be fake," Sun Qin said bluntly. For franchise stores, it's about filling inventory first, but for headquarters, it brings higher operational risks and public opinion costs. The thing lightning warehouse businesses fear most is a fast front end and a chaotic back end. Store count grows, but supply efficiency, promotional execution, and price management don't upgrade in sync. The faster the growth, the more strain on the back end. Jiangxiaotun's solution: break supply down and layer it. For stores that can be strongly controlled, first solidify unified supply, pulling the assortment, pricing, and promotional rhythm as much as possible to the platform side. For more difficult stores, they don't ignore them but first solidify basic actions. First increase core product coverage, then optimize sell-through, then gradually improve execution consistency. This pace may seem slower, but it aligns better with real operations. Because store management is never unified by a single command; it must be pushed forward layer by layer through product structure, inventory pressure, personnel execution, and system coordination. On one hand, manage store execution so products can be laid out and sold as planned. On the other hand, connect brand resources to establish more stable cooperation mechanisms for supply, promotions, pricing, and placement. Furthermore, reorganize supply roles like distributors and pallet operators so different types of products have someone to handle them, preventing the front end from running fast while the back end constantly patches holes. This is no longer a question of store-opening capability, but whether scattered actions like goods, prices, promotions, and fulfillment can be turned into a stable system. Jiangxiaotun's internal strength is reflected not only in upgrading its original product and operations teams but also in upgrading management and data systems. The team is gradually introducing data system methodologies once used by large chain retailers, aiming to shift supply from experience-driven to data-driven through real-time monitoring of inventory, sell-through, and fulfillment efficiency. "Let professionals do professional work. Move from people supervising people to systems managing people and processes managing tasks," Sun Qin said. This is Jiangxiaotun's most critical change at present and the true threshold for the lightning warehouse industry. The Second Half of Lightning Warehouses: Competing on System Capabilities Many people's first reaction to lightning warehouses is that it's a business about speed. Platforms compete for traffic, stores for orders, brands for position—everyone is charging forward. But the deeper we talked, the more I felt: speed is just the threshold, not the endgame. In Sun Qin's view, from an industry evolution perspective, the second half of lightning warehouses has at least three capability thresholds, each building on the last. The first to be filled is supply capability. First, complete the assortment, stabilize supply, and smooth fulfillment. First solve "can buy," then optimize "buy well." First stabilize high-frequency, essential needs, then talk about structural upgrades, product refinement, and even private labels later. The second threshold is organizational capability. This is often the most underestimated. Many people see a lightning warehouse company with many stores and rising orders and assume its capabilities are mature. But in reality, store growth and organizational maturity are never the same thing. The former can be driven by a window of opportunity; the latter must be honed through time, discipline, and systems. What truly differentiates is not an exceptionally strong individual or a particularly capable team, but a set of replicable organizational actions. How franchise recruitment enters stores, how products are shelved, how promotions are executed, how stockouts are handled, how store issues are reported, how brand resources are connected, how regional teams coordinate—if these actions cannot be standardized, the company will remain stuck in the "people supervising people" stage. Going deeper, what truly determines the ceiling is coordination capability. This is also the hardest but most critical point in the second half of lightning warehouses. Because lightning warehouses are never a one-company show. They are always the result of multi-party coordination. The front end involves platforms and stores; the back end involves brands, distributors, pallet operators, and warehousing and distribution systems. If any link's rhythm is off, the whole becomes inefficient. In the past, many companies failed not for lack of effort but because coordination was too loose. Brands have their own assessment metrics, distributors have their own profit logic, stores have their own purchasing habits, and platforms have their own fulfillment requirements. Everyone is on the same chain, but often not working from the same blueprint. In the end, lightning warehouses haven't changed the underlying logic of retail; they've just re-done the offline supply business with new platforms and new fulfillment methods. Players that truly go far will ultimately return to the same answer: smooth out complex things, integrate scattered actions into a systematic framework, and turn short-term growth into long-term capability.
Conclusion: Retail Has No Shortcuts, Only Grunt Work
A direct takeaway from this exchange with Jiangxiaotun is that the lightning warehouse business is moving from barbaric growth to refined operations. In the past two years, people more easily saw its fast side: rapid store expansion, rapid order growth, rapid platform changes. But once a certain scale is reached, companies face daily the very traditional, specific, and unavoidable operational issues: whether supply can be stable, whether the organization can keep up, and whether coordination can run smoothly. Jiangxiaotun is answering this question, and so are many lightning warehouse companies. At the end of the interview, Sun Qin said something that perhaps best annotates this "slowing down": "Retail has no shortcuts, only grunt work. Jiangxiaotun is willing to 'slow down' at its best time, not to play it safe, but to go further. I am fortunate to bring over a decade of experience to work with the team to transform this company from 'able to open stores' to 'able to fight battles,' from 'able to grow' to 'able to endure.'" And perhaps this is the most noteworthy signal for the second half of lightning warehouses.